rarely become mad, still such an event is well within the bounds of
possibility, for our reasoning faculties are like powder, which, though
it catches fire easily, will never catch fire at all without a spark. The
book of the Spanish nun has all the properties necessary to make a man
crack-brained; but for the poison to take effect he must be isolated, put
under the Leads, and deprived of all other employments.

In November, 1767, as I was going from Pampeluna to Madrid, my coachman,
Andrea Capello, stopped for us to dine in a town of Old Castille. So
dismal and dreary a place did I find it that I asked its name. How I
laughed when I was told that it was Agrada!

"Here, then," I said to myself, "did that saintly lunatic produce that
masterpiece which but for M. Cavalli I should never have known."

An old priest, who had the highest possible opinion of me the moment I
began to ask him about this truthful historian of the mother of Christ,
shewed me the very place where she had written it, and assured me that
the father, mother, sister, and in short all the kindred of the blessed
biographer, had been great saints in their generation. He told me, and
spoke truly, that the Spaniards had solicited her canonization at Rome,
with that of the venerable Palafox. This "Mystical City," perhaps, gave
Father Malagrida the idea of writing the life of St. Anne, written, also,
at the dictation of the Holy Ghost, but the poor devil of a Jesuit had to
suffer martyrdom for it--an additional reason for his canonization, if
the horrible society ever comes to life again, and attains the universal
power which is its secret aim.

At the end of eight or nine days I found myself moneyless. Lawrence asked
me for some, but I had not got it.